not let Charlotte Lovell marry Joe Ralston. All the traditions of honour
and probity in which she had been brought up forbade her to connive at
such a plan. She could conceive--had already conceived--of high-handed
measures, swift and adroit defiances of precedent, subtle revolts
against the heartlessness of the social routine. But a lie she could
never connive at. The idea of Charlotte’s marrying Joe Ralston--her own
Jim’s cousin--without revealing her past to him, seemed to Delia as
dishonourable as it would have seemed to any Ralston. And to tell him
the truth would at once put an end to the marriage; of that even Chatty
was aware. Social tolerance was not dealt in the same measure to men and
to women, and neither Delia nor Charlotte had ever wondered why: like
all the young women of their class they simply bowed to the ineluctable.
No; there was no escape from the dilemma. As clearly as it was Delia’s
duty to save Clem Spender’s child, so clearly, also, she seemed destined
to sacrifice his mistress. As the thought pressed on her she remembered
Charlotte’s wistful cry: “I want to be married, like all of you,” and
her heart tightened. But yet it must not be.
“I make every allowance” (Joe was droning on) “for my sweet girl’s
ignorance and inexperience--for her lovely purity. How could a man wish
his future wife to be--to be otherwise? You’re with me, Jim? And Delia?
I’ve told her, you understand, that she shall always have a special sum
set apart for her poor children--in addition to her pin-money; on that
she may absolutely count. God! I’m willing to draw up a deed, a
settlement, before a lawyer, if she says so. I admire, I appreciate her
generosity. But I ask you, Delia, as a mother--mind you, now, I want
your frank opinion. If you think I can stretch a point--can let her go
on giving her personal care to these children until ... until....” A
flush of pride suffused the potential father’s brow ... “till nearer
duties claim her, why, I’m more than ready ... if you’ll tell her so. I
undertake,” Joe proclaimed, suddenly tingling with the memory of his
last glass, “to make it right with my mother, whose prejudices, of
course, while I respect them, I can never allow to--to come between me
and my own convictions.” He sprang to his feet, and beamed on his
dauntless double in the chimney-mirror. “My convictions,” he flung back
at it.
“Hear, hear!” cried Jim emotionally.
Delia’s needle gave the canvas a sharp prick, and she pushed her work
aside.
“I think I understand you both, Joe. Certainly, in Charlotte’s place, I
could never give up those children.”
“There you are, my dear fellow!” Jim triumphed, as proud of this
vicarious courage as of the perfection of the dinner.
“Never,” said Delia. “Especially, I mean, the foundlings--there are two,
I think. Those children always die if they are sent to asylums. That is
what is haunting Chatty.”
“Poor innocents! How I love her for loving them! That there should be
such scoundrels upon this earth unpunished--. Delia, will you tell her
that I’ll do whatever--”
“Gently, old man, gently,” Jim admonished him, with a flash of Ralston
caution.
“Well, that is to say, whatever--in reason--”
Delia lifted an arresting hand. “I’ll tell her, Joe: she will be
grateful. But it’s of no use--”
“No use? What more--?”
“Nothing more: except this. Charlotte has had a return of her old
illness. She coughed blood here today. You must not marry her.”
There: it was done. She stood up, trembling in every bone, and feeling
herself pale to the lips. Had she done right? Had she done wrong? And
would she ever know?
Poor Joe turned on her a face as wan as hers: he clutched the back of
his armchair, his head drooping forward like an old man’s. His lips
moved, but made no sound.
“My God!” Jim stammered. “But you know you’ve got to buck up, old boy.”
“I’m--I’m so sorry for you, Joe. She’ll tell you herself tomorrow,”
Delia faltered, while her husband continued to proffer heavy
consolations.
“Take it like a man, old chap. Think of yourself--your future. Can’t be,
you know. Delia’s right; she always _is_. Better get it over--better
face the music now than later.”
“Now than later,” Joe echoed with a tortured grin; and it occurred to
Delia that never before in the course of his easy good-natured life had
he had--any more than her Jim--to give up anything his heart was set on.
Even the vocabulary of renunciation, and its conventional gestures, were
unfamiliar to him.
“But I don’t understand. I can’t give her up,” he declared, blinking
away a boyish tear.
“Think of the children, my dear fellow; it’s your duty,” Jim insisted,
checking a glance of pride at Delia’s wholesome comeliness.
In the long conversation that followed between the cousins--argument,
counter-argument, sage counsel and hopeless protest--Delia took but an
occasional part. She knew well enough what the end would be. The
bridegroom who had feared that his bride might bring home contagion from
her visits to the poor would not knowingly implant disease in his race.
Nor was that all. Too many sad instances of mothers prematurely fading,
and leaving their husbands alone with a young flock to rear, must be
pressing upon Joe’s memory. Ralstons, Lovells, Lannings, Archers, van
der Luydens--which one of them had not some grave to care for in a
distant cemetery: graves of young relatives “in a decline,” sent abroad
to be cured by balmy Italy? The Protestant grave-yards of Rome and Pisa
were full of New York names; the vision of that familiar pilgrimage with
a dying wife was one to turn the most ardent Ralston cold. And all the
while, as she listened with bent head, Delia kept repeating to herself:
“This is easy; but how am I going to tell Charlotte?”
When poor Joe, late that evening, wrung her hand with a stammered
farewell, she called him back abruptly from the threshold.
“You must let me see her first, please; you must wait till she sends for
you--” and she winced a little at the alacrity of his acceptance. But no
amount of rhetorical bolstering-up could make it easy for a young man to
face what lay ahead of Joe; and her final glance at him was one of
compassion....
* * * * *
The front door closed upon Joe, and she was roused by her husband’s
touch on her shoulder.
“I never admired you more, darling. My wise Delia!”
Her head bent back, she took his kiss, and then drew apart. The sparkle
in his eyes she understood to be as much an invitation to her bloom as a
tribute to her sagacity.
She held him at arms’ length. “What should you have done, Jim, if I’d
had to tell you about myself what I’ve just told Joe about Chatty?”
A slight frown showed that he thought the question negligible, and
hardly in her usual taste. “Come,” his strong arm entreated her.
She continued to stand away from him, with grave eyes. “Poor Chatty!
Nothing left now--”
His own eyes grew grave, in instant sympathy. At such moments he was
still the sentimental boy whom she could manage.
“Ah, poor Chatty, indeed!” He groped for the readiest panacea. “Lucky,
now, after all, that she has those paupers, isn’t it? I suppose a woman
_must_ have children to love--somebody else’s if not her own.” It was
evident that the thought of the remedy had already relieved his pain.
“Yes,” Delia agreed, “I see no other comfort for her. I’m sure Joe will
feel that too. Between us, darling--” and now she let him have her
hands--“between us, you and I must see to it that she keeps her babies.”
“Her babies?” He smiled at the possessive pronoun. “Of course, poor
girl! Unless indeed she’s sent to Italy?”
“Oh, she won’t be that--where’s the money to come from? And, besides,
she’d never leave Aunt Lovell. But I thought, dear, if I might tell her
tomorrow--you see, I’m not exactly looking forward to my talk with
her--if I might tell her that you would let me look after the baby
she’s most worried about, the poor little foundling girl who has no
name and no home--if I might put aside a fixed sum from my
pin-money....”
Their hands flowed together, she lifted her flushing face to his. Manly
tears were in his eyes; ah, how he triumphed in her health, her wisdom,
her generosity!
“Not a penny from your pin-money--never!”
She feigned discouragement and wonder. “Think, dear--if I’d had to give
you up!”
“Not a penny from your pin-money, I say--but as much more as you need,
to help poor Chatty’s pauper. There--will that content you?”
“Dearest! When I think of our own, upstairs!” They held each other, awed
by that evocation.
V
Charlotte Lovell, at the sound of her cousin’s step, lifted a fevered
face from the pillow.
The bedroom, dim and close, smelt of eau de Cologne and fresh linen.
Delia, blinking in from the bright winter sun, had to feel her way
through a twilight obstructed by dark mahogany.
“I want to see your face, Chatty: unless your head aches too much?”
Charlotte signed “No,” and Delia drew back the heavy window curtains and
let in a ray of light. In it she saw the girl’s head, livid against the
bed-linen, the brick-rose circles again visible under darkly shadowed
lids. Just so, she remembered, poor cousin So-and-so had looked the
week before she sailed for Italy!
“Delia!” Charlotte breathed.
Delia drew near the bed, and stood looking down at her cousin with new
eyes. Yes: it had been easy enough, the night before, to dispose of
Chatty’s future as if it were her own. But now?
“Darling--”
“Oh, begin, please,” the girl interrupted, “or I shall know that what’s
coming is too dreadful!”
“Chatty, dearest, if I promised you too much--”
“Jim won’t let you take my child? I knew it! Shall I always go on
dreaming things that can never be?”
Delia, her tears running down, knelt by the bed and gave her fresh hand
into the other’s burning clutch.
“Don’t think that, dear: think only of what you’d like best....”
“Like best?” The girl sat up sharply against her pillows, alive to the
hot fingertips.
“You can’t marry Joe, dear--can you--and keep little Tina?” Delia
continued.
“Not keep her with me, no: but somewhere where I could slip off to see
her--oh, I had hoped such follies!”
“Give up follies, Charlotte. Keep her where? See your own child in
secret? Always in dread of disgrace? Of wrong to your other children?
Have you ever thought of that?”
“Oh, my poor head won’t think! You’re trying to tell me that I must give
her up?”
“No, dear; but that you must not marry Joe.”
Charlotte sank back on the pillow, her eyes half-closed. “I tell you I
must make my child a home. Delia, you’re too blest to understand!”
“Think yourself blest too, Chatty. You shan’t give up your baby. She
shall live with you: you shall take care of her--for me.”
“For you?”
“I promised you I’d take her, didn’t I? But not that you should marry
Joe. Only that I would make a home for your baby. Well, that’s done; you
two shall be always together.”
Charlotte clung to her and sobbed. “But Joe--I can’t tell him, I can’t!”
She put back Delia suddenly. “You haven’t told him of my--of my baby? I
couldn’t bear to hurt him as much as that.”
“I told him that you coughed blood yesterday. He’ll see you presently:
he’s dreadfully unhappy. He has been given to understand that, in view
of your bad health, the engagement is broken by your wish--and he
accepts your decision; but if he weakens, or if you weaken, I can do
nothing for you or for little Tina. For heaven’s sake remember that!”
Delia released her hold, and Charlotte leaned back silent, with closed
eyes and narrowed lips. Almost like a corpse she lay there. On a chair
near the bed hung the poplin with red velvet ribbons which had been made
over in honour of her betrothal. A pair of new slippers of bronze kid
peeped from beneath it. Poor Chatty! She had hardly had time to be
pretty....
Delia sat by the bed motionless, her eyes on her cousin’s closed face.
They followed the course of a tear that forced a way between Charlotte’s
tight lids, hung on the lashes, glittered slowly down the cheeks. As
the tear reached the narrowed lips they spoke.
“Shall I live with her somewhere, do you mean? Just she and I together?”
“Just you and she.”
“In a little house?”
“In a little house....”
“You’re sure, Delia?”
“Sure, my dearest.”
Charlotte once more raised herself on her elbow and sent a hand groping
under the pillow. She drew out a narrow ribbon on which hung a diamond
ring.
“I had taken it off already,” she said simply, and handed it to Delia.
PART II
VI
You could always have told, every one agreed afterward, that Charlotte
Lovell was meant to be an old maid. Even before her illness it had been
manifest: there was something prim about her in spite of her fiery hair.
Lucky enough for her, poor girl, considering her wretched health in her
youth: Mrs. James Ralston’s contemporaries, for instance, remembered
Charlotte as a mere ghost, coughing her lungs out--that, of course, had
been the reason for her breaking her engagement with Joe Ralston.
True, she had recovered very rapidly, in spite of the peculiar treatment
she was given. The Lovells, as every one knew, couldn’t afford to send
her to Italy; the previous experiment in Georgia had been unsuccessful;
and so she was packed off to a farm-house on the Hudson--a little place
on the James Ralstons’ property--where she lived for five or six years
with an Irish servant-woman and a foundling baby. The story of the
foundling was another queer episode in Charlotte’s history. From the
time of her first illness, when she was only twenty-two or three, she
had developed an almost morbid tenderness for children, especially for
the children of the poor. It was said--Dr. Lanskell was understood to
have said--that the baffled instinct of motherhood was peculiarly
intense in cases where lung-disease prevented marriage. And so, when it
was decided that Chatty must break her engagement to Joe Ralston and go
to live in the country, the doctor had told her family that the only
hope of saving her lay in not separating her entirely from her pauper
children, but in letting her choose one of them, the youngest and most
pitiable, and devote herself to its care. So the James Ralstons had lent
her their little farm-house, and Mrs. Jim, with her extraordinary gift
of taking things in at a glance, had at once arranged everything, and
even pledged herself to look after the baby if Charlotte died.
Charlotte did not die. She lived to grow robust and middle-aged,
energetic and even tyrannical. And as the transformation in her
character took place she became more and more like the typical old maid:
precise, methodical, absorbed in trifles, and attaching an exaggerated
importance to the smallest social and domestic observances. Such was her
reputation as a vigilant house-wife that, when poor Jim Ralston was
killed by a fall from his horse, and left Delia, still young, with a boy
and girl to bring up, it seemed perfectly natural that the heart-broken
widow should take her cousin to live with her and share her task. But
Delia Ralston never did things quite like other people. When she took
Charlotte she took Charlotte’s foundling too: a dark-haired child with
pale brown eyes, and the odd incisive manner of children who have lived
too much with their elders. The little girl was called Tina Lovell: it
was vaguely supposed that Charlotte had adopted her. She grew up on
terms of affectionate equality with her young Ralston cousins, and
almost as much so--it might be said--with the two women who mothered
her. But, impelled by an instinct of imitation which no one took the
trouble to correct, she always called Delia Ralston “Mamma,” and
Charlotte Lovell “Aunt Chatty.” She was a brilliant and engaging
creature, and people marvelled at poor Chatty’s luck in having chosen so
interesting a specimen among her foundlings (for she was by this time
supposed to have had a whole asylum-full to choose from).
The agreeable elderly bachelor, Sillerton Jackson, returning from a
prolonged sojourn in Paris (where he was understood to have been made
much of by the highest personages) was immensely struck by Tina’s charms
when he saw her at her coming-out ball, and asked Delia’s permission to
come some evening and dine alone with her and her young people. He
complimented the widow on the rosy beauty of her own young Delia; but
the mother’s keen eye perceived that all the while he was watching Tina,
and after dinner he confided to the older ladies that there was
something “very French” in the girl’s way of doing her hair, and that in
the capital of all the Elegances she would have been pronounced
extremely stylish.
“Oh--” Delia deprecated, beamingly, while Charlotte Lovell sat bent over
her work with pinched lips; but Tina, who had been laughing with her
cousins at the other end of the room, was around upon her elders in a
flash.
“I heard what Mr. Sillerton said! Yes, I did, Mamma: he says I do my
hair stylishly. Didn’t I always tell you so? I _know_ it’s more becoming
to let it curl as it wants to than to plaster it down with bandoline
like Aunty’s--”
“Tina, Tina--you always think people are admiring you!” Miss Lovell
protested.
“Why shouldn’t I, when they do?” the girl laughingly challenged; and,
turning her mocking eyes on Sillerton Jackson: “Do tell Aunt Charlotte
not to be so dreadfully old-maidish!”
Delia saw the blood rise to Charlotte Lovell’s face. It no longer
painted two brick-rose circles on her thin cheek-bones, but diffused a
harsh flush over her whole countenance, from the collar fastened with an
old-fashioned garnet brooch to the pepper-and-salt hair (with no trace
of red left in it) flattened down over her hollow temples.
That evening, when they went up to bed, Delia called Tina into her room.
“You ought not to speak to your Aunt Charlotte as you did this evening,
dear. It’s disrespectful--you must see that it hurts her.”
The girl overflowed with compunction. “Oh, I’m so sorry! Because I said
she was an old maid? But she _is_, isn’t she, Mamma? In her inmost soul,
I mean. I don’t believe she’s ever been young--ever thought of fun or
admiration or falling in love--do you? That’s why she never understands
me, and you always do, you darling dear Mamma.” With one of her light
movements, Tina was in the widow’s arms.
“Child, child,” Delia softly scolded, kissing the dark curls planted in
five points on the girl’s forehead.
There was a soft foot-fall in the passage, and Charlotte Lovell stood in
the door. Delia, without moving, sent her a glance of welcome over
Tina’s shoulder.
“Come in, Charlotte. I’m scolding Tina for behaving like a spoilt baby
before Sillerton Jackson. What will he think of her?”
“Just what she deserves, probably,” Charlotte returned with a cold
smile. Tina went toward her, and her thin lips touched the girl’s
proffered forehead just where Delia’s warm kiss had rested. “Goodnight,
child,” she said in her dry tone of dismissal.
The door closed on the two women, and Delia signed to Charlotte to take
the armchair opposite to her own.
“Not so near the fire,” Miss Lovell answered. She chose a
straight-backed seat, and sat down with folded hands. Delia’s eyes
rested absently on the thin ringless fingers: she wondered why Charlotte
never wore her mother’s jewels.
“I overheard what you were saying to Tina, Delia. You were scolding her
because she called me an old maid.”
It was Delia’s turn to colour. “I scolded her for being disrespectful,
dear; if you heard what I said you can’t think that I was too severe.”
“Not too severe: no. I’ve never thought you too severe with Tina; on
the contrary.”
“You think I spoil her?”
“Sometimes.”
Delia felt an unreasoning resentment. “What was it I said that you
object to?”
Charlotte returned her glance steadily. “I would rather she thought me
an old maid than--”
“Oh--” Delia murmured. With one of her quick leaps of intuition she had
entered into the other’s soul, and once more measured its shuddering
loneliness.
“What else,” Charlotte inexorably pursued, “_can_ she possibly be
allowed to think me--ever?”
“I see ... I see ...” the widow faltered.
“A ridiculous narrow-minded old maid--nothing else,” Charlotte Lovell
insisted, getting to her feet, “or I shall never feel safe with her.”
“Goodnight, my dear,” Delia said compassionately. There were moments
when she almost hated Charlotte for being Tina’s mother, and others,
such as this, when her heart was wrung by the tragic spectacle of that
unavowed bond.
Charlotte seemed to have divined her thought.
“Oh, but don’t pity me! She’s mine,” she murmured, going.
VII
Delia Ralston sometimes felt that the real events of her life did not
begin until both her children had contracted--so safely and
suitably--their irreproachable New York alliances. The boy had married
first, choosing a Vandergrave in whose father’s bank at Albany he was to
have an immediate junior partnership; and young Delia (as her mother had
foreseen she would) had selected John Junius, the safest and soundest of
the many young Halseys, and followed him to his parents’ house the year
after her brother’s marriage.
After young Delia had left the house in Gramercy Park it was inevitable
that Tina should take the centre front of its narrow stage. Tina had
reached the marriageable age, she was admired and sought after; but what
hope was there of her finding a husband? The two watchful women did not
propound this question to each other; but Delia Ralston, brooding over
it day by day, and taking it up with her when she mounted at night to
her bedroom, knew that Charlotte Lovell, at the same hour, carried the
same problem with her to the floor above.
The two cousins, during their eight years of life together, had seldom
openly disagreed. Indeed, it might almost have been said that there was
nothing open in their relation. Delia would have had it otherwise: after
they had once looked so deeply into each other’s souls it seemed
unnatural that a veil should fall between them. But she understood that
Tina’s ignorance of her origin must at all costs be preserved, and that
Charlotte Lovell, abrupt, passionate and inarticulate, knew of no other
security than to wall herself up in perpetual silence.
So far had she carried this self-imposed reticence that Mrs. Ralston was
surprised at her suddenly asking, soon after young Delia’s marriage, to
be allowed to move down into the small bedroom next to Tina’s that had
been left vacant by the bride’s departure.
“But you’ll be so much less comfortable there, Chatty. Have you thought
of that? Or is it on account of the stairs?”
“No; it’s not the stairs,” Charlotte answered with her usual bluntness.
How could she avail herself of the pretext Delia offered her, when Delia
knew that she still ran up and down the three flights like a girl? “It’s
because I should be next to Tina,” she said, in a low voice that jarred
like an untuned string.
“Oh--very well. As you please.” Mrs. Ralston could not tell why she felt
suddenly irritated by the request, unless it were that she had already
amused herself with the idea of fitting up the vacant room as a
sitting-room for Tina. She had meant to do it in pink and pale green,
like an opening flower.
“Of course, if there is any reason--” Charlotte suggested, as if reading
her thought.
“None whatever; except that--well, I’d meant to surprise Tina by doing
the room up as a sort of little boudoir where she could have her books
and things, and see her girl friends.”
“You’re too kind, Delia; but Tina mustn’t have boudoirs,” Miss Lovell
answered ironically, the green specks showing in her eyes.
“Very well: as you please,” Delia repeated, in the same irritated tone.
“I’ll have your things brought down tomorrow.”
Charlotte paused in the doorway. “You’re sure there’s no other reason?”
“Other reason? Why should there be?” The two women looked at each other
almost with hostility, and Charlotte turned to go.
The talk once over, Delia was annoyed with herself for having yielded to
Charlotte’s wish. Why must it always be she who gave in, she who, after
all, was the mistress of the house, and to whom both Charlotte and Tina
might almost be said to owe their very existence, or at least all that
made it worth having? Yet whenever any question arose about the girl it
was invariably Charlotte who gained her point, Delia who yielded: it
seemed as if Charlotte, in her mute obstinate way, were determined to
take every advantage of the dependence that made it impossible for a
woman of Delia’s nature to oppose her.